Joe Marinelli promised us a Super Bowl. The inaugural Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon, staged a year ago today, delivered as only the NFL’s title game and an Olympics can.

The race was kind to the wallet but hard on the head.

Logistical headaches overshadowed the economic impact for many locals. Holding the pre-race expo at the Savannah International Trade and Convention caused bridge-mageddon on the eve of the race. Parking participants in remote lots on race day turned downtown into a ghost town. The dull race course wasn’t true to our scenic city.

Organizers responded with seemingly silly solutions for the marathon’s second running, held over the weekend.

They told out-of-towners vehicular access to Hutchinson Island for the expo would be limited and they should park downtown on Friday and ride the water ferries to the trade center. Cynics figured the plan would result in trading traffic issue on the Talmadge Bridge backups throughout the historic district as visitors searched for the ever-elusive downtown parking spot.

Organizers abandoned the remote-park-and-shuttle plan in favor of stacking runner vehicles downtown on race day morning. Every St. Patrick’s Day Parade veteran knows the time-consuming cluster that creates.

The only sensible adjustment made was to tweak the course route to better feature downtown, Ardsley Park, Savannah State’s campus and LaRoche Avenue.

In the end, the plans proved brilliant, not boneheaded.

There was no Friday gridlock and only minor Saturday morning snafus. The altered course drew the right kind of s-words from runners — “scenic,” “spectacular,” “sensational” and “stunning.” And the Forsyth Park party spilled over into downtown to the delight of merchants who missed out on last year’s economic windfall.

“What I’m most proud of right now how we worked together to address all the issues that plagued us a year ago,” said Marinelli, president of Visit Savannah and the local point person with the marathon’s organizer, The Competitor Group. “We worked hard in planning with the city, the police and the county and everything pretty much worked.”

Marathon mojo

The only party involved in marathon planning sure of the changes ahead of time is the one shunning the credit: The Competitor Group.

Given Competitor’s road record, locals shouldn’t be so surprised with the Year 2 success. From the day the San Diego-based marathon series announced it would run a race here, there was a sense this group had mojo.

Perhaps no event has more moving parts than a large marathon. The venue stretches over 26 miles and lasts multiple hours.

Yet Competitor arrived with a plan as comprehensive as any developed by Sun Tzu or Steve Jobs. They held public meetings, went the extra mile to communicate with those impacted by the race course and marketed the event locally, regionally and nationally as if it really were the Super Bowl.

The group understood there would be “glitches.” Competitor puts on more than 20 races a year in cities across the country and in Europe. They’ve yet to stage a flawless race in the debut year anywhere, officials admit.

The true measure is always in the second and third years, when the organizers apply the lessons learned.

“Our internal philosophy is pretty simple: the race needs to be a beneficial experience for everyone involved, from the host cities to the runners to local businesses to us,” said Competitor’s Malain McCormick, who directs the Savannah event as well as a handful of other races in the Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon Series. “If not everybody benefits, then we have to rework the model. And you rework it until you get it right.”

The field contracted this year from the debut race, with more than 2,000 fewer runners competing and 6,000 fewer registering. Publicly, the organizers talk about a “sophomore slump,” how first-year excitement often fails to carry over.

But other factors were in play. Competitor dialed back the marketing blitz, perhaps because the group is busy expanding elsewhere and perhaps because the organizer’s wanted to see how their planning tweaks worked. And last year’s logistical issues did scare off many would-be returnees.

The word-of-mouth reviews will be more positive coming out of this year’s race, with the course changes sparking renewed interest. Don’t be surprised if the route is tweaked again to incorporate more of Savannah’s more scenic spots.

The early Saturday parking problems will be addressed. Assistant City Manager Marty Johnston shouldered most of the blame, saying a few overzealous parking garage staffers failed to check the parking passes closely and allowed some assigned to one garage to park in another.

With every spot sold in advance, the mistakes caused a chain reaction delay that left a few runners running for the starting line. Johnston will go the extra mile to prevent a repeat.

The more immediate concern is the extension of the marathon’s contract. The 2013 race is the final under the current deal. Visit Savannah and Competitor have agreed in principle to extend the commitment through 2016, and Visit Savannah’s Marinelli expects to have a new deal in place by Dec. 1.

And the next contract reads almost exactly the same as the existing one, Marinelli said. Competitor is not demanding additional concessions for bringing the running Super Bowl to Savannah.

“We’ve hit on something good here,” Marinelli said. “And as we just saw, it’s only going to get better.”

Adam Van Brimmer’s column appears each Monday. He blogs several days a week at www.savannahnow.com and also is a social media regular @avanbrimmer on Twitter and Daddy Warbucks on Facebook.

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Ran my first marathon here for the inaugural and while I experienced no problems, I know what they were there and believe everyone involved pulled off as flawless of a 2nd year as could be possible. Thank you to everyone involved in putting this together.

The closest thing I could have as a complaint is that someone from Savannah needs to coordinate with the cell carriers, particularly Verizon, on these big events because for both St Patricks Day and now the marathon this year, there was no data while downtown. My run tracking was hindered some by this, ability to stream my motivating music was completely useless, and the constant searching for data and trying to connect to services drained my iphone battery flat and even with a backup booster charger I ran with, I barely finished the 26.2 with less than 10% battery. Once outside the historic district, data worked normal but I was afraid to use my music or tracking for fear of how much battery I'd already lost.